Compiler choices

This article is about choosing a C++ code compiler. For a list of subjects which use the word "compiler", see Compiler.

You have several choices for compiling unedited variants of the Source SDK depending on which version you are using.

Visual Studio

Visual Studio logo used from 2010-2012.

This article or section is about an external tool that is not directly related to Valve's engines. It is not an exhaustive source of information and may only exist on this wiki for reference purposes.
Please see  Visual Studio for more information on the tool itself.

This article is about the IDE recommended for use with the Source engine's C++ code. For the rich text editor commonly used with scripts, see Visual Studio Code.

Visual Studio is an  Integrated development environment (IDE) developed and maintained by Microsoft. It is the default IDE recommended for use with the Source SDK on Windows. In Source 2013, the default version of Visual Studio used for Source engine development is Visual Studio 2013. Older versions of Visual Studio are not compatible with Source 2013, and newer versions of Visual Studio will not work with Source 2013 by default. Please see Installing Visual Studio for Source SDK 2013 for more information on how to install Visual Studio 2013, as well as how newer versions of Visual Studio can be used.

Availability

Different versions of Visual Studio are supported between different versions of the Source SDK.

Version	Engine branch	Requirements
Visual Studio 2002	Source 2006 and earlier	See Compiling under VS2002.
Visual Studio 2003		See Compiling under VS2003.
Visual Studio 2005	Alien Swarm Authoring Tools, Source 2007 and earlier	See Compiling under VS2005.
Visual Studio 2008		See Compiling under VS2008.
Visual Studio 2010		See Compiling under VS2010.
Visual Studio 2012		See Compiling under VS2012.
Visual Studio 2013	Source 2013	Default
Visual Studio 2015		See Compiling under VS2022.
Visual Studio 2017
Visual Studio 2019
Visual Studio 2022

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GCC

This article or section is about an external tool that is not directly related to Valve's engines. It is not an exhaustive source of information and may only exist on this wiki for reference purposes.
Please see  GNU Compiler Collection for more information on the tool itself.

The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is a collection of code compilers maintained by the GNU Project. G++ in particular is the default compiler recommended for use with the Source SDK on Linux.

Availability

Note: Alien Swarm - SDK does not support GCC. If you want your Alien Swarm mod to run on Linux, you will need to use Proton.

Version	Engine branch	Requirements
GCC 4.2.x or lower	Source 2007 and earlier	See Compiling under Linux.
GCC 4.6-4.8	Source 2013	See Source SDK 2013 on Linux ("container" method).
GCC 5 or higher		See Source SDK 2013 on Linux ("container" method) and optional step for changing the toolchain.

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See also

• Building without Visual Studio
• Visual Studio Code — A rich text editor commonly used with scripts outside of the code.

External links

• Visual Studio
• GCC